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1 The Virgin Birth

The gospel writers open their accounts of the life of Jesus, his biography⁷⁵ (however incomplete and fragmentary) with different beginnings, with an origin each of them believes to be decisive for the events to follow as they lead to a culmination neither expected nor foreseen. Jesus begins as the pre-creation logos in John, after his baptism of regeneration in Mark, and with two versions of the virgin birth in Matthew and Luke, all four of them complementary and with Jesus coming into the world as an inauguration and leading to a subsequent history for all people who become more than any particularity related to their origin. Girard’s argument is succinct as it is compelling. “In order not to betray Christ’s revelation, one must always keep all four Gospels in mind at once.”⁷⁶ At once: without simply relying on comparison, the inter-relation of the three Synoptics, or the uniqueness attributed to John in order to single him out (or worse, to separate him) the revelations of Jesus are inseparable from his words and his acts. But when the writers of the gospels are attempting to portray Jesus according to specific needs, for their immediate communities, or in developing the “good news,” they are also relating him back to a three-part tradition in Jewish history – the patriarchal, the monarchical, and the prophetic as irreproachable foundations, even when, in the case of Matthew and Luke, they present the extraordinary origin of his life with a virgin woman who conceives him through a divine impregnation with the Holy Spirit. The virgin birth has no precedence; scripture cannot anticipate Jesus. Equally if not more noticeable: when the gospels begin to reach their conclusion, neither Jesus’ death nor his resurrection could be imagined for those who anticipated a Messiah or a king. From the moment of his death, all references to prophetic predictions are abandoned; relations to the past are severed. The virgin birth and the resurrection are instances of a double-relation: Jesus was prior to all inceptions and all culminations.

His consciousness cannot be determined by time or history.

The genealogies in Matthew and Luke are also incommensurable with Jesus’ advent, from a virgin (and that means without a pater, without paternity, with no ←31 | 32→antecedents) and as a first-born the letter to the Hebrews unequivocally defines as “without father, without mother, without genealogy” (Heb. 7:3). N.T. Wright believes that “the gospels are biographies,”⁷⁷ as long as the reader also recognizes ensuing problems in such a bios. The nativity stories are both divided by opposing representations of Jesus who announces himself repeatedly to be “the son of man” while at the same time restraining his individuality by a relying on a past history that has effectively prepared for his coming. The writers of the virgin birth are under considerable strain and cannot fully realize the implications of their sources or their editorializing. Jesus cannot be an outcome. Matthew and Luke are so intent on preserving his multi-layered descent to a historical beginning that they cannot see how the virgin birth and “the son of man” (the only title he gives himself) are absolutely related. We are not concerned at all with the supposed “discrepancy in details in the two infancy narratives”⁷⁸ as the incommensurability between Jesus’ virgin birth and his genealogy. The reader must therefore be deliberate and attentive to every biographical moment; long-held assumptions can be at least temporarily suspended. In existence, Jesus may have been born in the nativity stories; his presence, however, becomes all the more remarkable not when the prophets are relied upon to give him authority but, on the contrary, when his period as a minister completely informs the reader about the unique meaning of the events surrounding his birth. His revelations are immediate; his appearance in the world initiates a series of events whose consequences will only be recognized much later, for example, when the days preceding Passover also become a commentary on the night of both anguish and liberation from Egyptian captivity at the time of Moses and the Israelites.

Rather than pointing out some inherent contradiction or implausibility in any of the beginnings provided by the accounts of the virgin birth in the gospels of Matthew and Luke – each of them, according to the historian motivated by the verification of events, cannot be true, that is, factual – the two gospels will be read comprehensively in order to stress, always, their inter-relatedness and their fundamental importance as a totality. An attempt will be made to present not so much one beginning as two inaugurations that are decisive for leading the reader towards biographical events that are specific, chronological, and ultimately teleological, an end without closure or finality – from the virgin births of Matthew ←32 | 33→and Luke as they lead to being “the son of man,” a first-born, moreover, who transforms his body and blood such that it will be infinitely internalized and capable of renewing the whole of humanity.

Jesus’ allegorical body as bread and the Passover sacrifice of an animal will confront each other on the eve of his own death.

A certain relationship will be interminable between the gospels’ narratives and their interpretation – on the one hand, Jesus being a descendant and an heir (related to Abraham, King David, and the prophets), on the other regarding him as absolutely independent from history, from a past he will now transform from out of himself alone and beginning with an idea more significant than a conception through the spirit and a birth from a virgin body.

Metaphysics and biology are both impertinent. “The importance of the infancy narratives lies not in the precise historicity of the events but in what those narratives show about Jesus.”⁷⁹ More precisely, and culminating in the gospel of Matthew, one event in particular will continue to influence, in meaning, subsequent events in the life of Jesus and in his ministry. The death of countless children – in Bethlehem after his birth, and in Egypt prior to the Exodus – will be a perpetual reminder of a history Jesus will commemorate; the memorial will not be one amongst others. He will be the first to acknowledge and remember all the first-born who perished in a horrifying night of death and liberation, with mothers in mourning and weeping for their sons and daughters. Exodus and the death of new-borns are inseparable; his own birth will inadvertently cause the brutal murder of the children of Bethlehem. Jesus will recollect both events and bring them into himself, as an act of reconciliation, of peace, an accomplishment intimated in the gospels if not sufficiently emphasized. Jesus’ revelations transform all historical determinants. In order for the future to be opened beyond customary expectations (as merely a function of time, with its incessant chronology, this and that) its horizon slackens its narrowness as Jesus returns to the past and, without changing events, redeems and renews their meaning for another time to come.

John and Mark may begin their account of the life of Jesus with a particular origin while, for their own reasons, omitting or ignoring the events of his birth. They are indifferent to his human birth and instead provide him with two distinct origins, as the pre-creation logos in John making him capable of a second act of creation, and in Mark when he emerges from the baptismal water with the spirit ←33 | 34→descending on and in him and confirming his regeneration. Matthew and Luke, on the other hand, are both concerned with presenting his virgin birth – an event that has elicited innumerable, and often diametrically opposed, responses, easily dismissed by the historian and a motivation for the theologian who reflects on the being of God and his intentions. The historian dismisses; the theologian submits.

Using a peculiar metaphor, Vermes tells us that the nativity story is “a million miles away from fact and reality.”⁸⁰ Indeed, it is out of this world; and distance has nothing to do with it. Vermes cannot concede that history as a category (as a discipline) is unable to contain the virgin birth. On the other hand, N.T. Wright’s ultimate conclusion on the belief in the virgin birth can still surprise – and not simply for the affirmation of theological faith. He concludes his chapter on the “virginal conception” with: “if that’s what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?”⁸¹ A hermeneutic reader restrains himself here: speculating on God’s intentions seems, at the very least, precarious. Brown believes that “infancy stories,” whether they were pre-Gospel or composed by Matthew and Luke, were written so they could be made “the vehicle of the message that Jesus was the Son of God acting for the salvation of mankind.”⁸² Needless to say, the metaphysical complication of such a belief leaves this reader with nothing to rely on but the narrative and what it accomplishes. On the other hand, and with the certainty of the skeptic (and, perhaps, with a little too much confidence in historical knowledge), Lüdemann tells us that “the statement that Jesus was engendered by the Spirit and born of a virgin is a falsification of the historical facts.”⁸³ An agnostic could never be so presumptuous.

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History and theology are both in extremis. They exhaust themselves with presuppositions and conclusions. Now that two prevailing traditions of history and theology have been briefly considered, one more concern needs to be addressed before turning to the narratives proper to interpret their significance. Whatever the merits of Bultmann’s demythology, and he remains important by stressing meaning over any myth or fact, he tells us that the idea of a divine generation from a virgin is “completely impossible” in the Old Testament and in Judaism. Therefore, he concludes, “it was first added in the transformation in Hellenism, where the idea of the generation of a king or hero from a virgin by the godhead was widespread.”⁸⁴ By reclaiming Jesus back into a Hellenistic narrative tradition, he is thereby reduced to being a copy, a model, mimetic. Jesus’ virgin birth cannot be equated or compared; it neither reflects pre-existing mythologies on the supposed extraordinary births of certain individuals (i.e. the emperor Augustus, with all the pretensions of divine origin) nor can it be included in a prior tradition – actual or narrative. “If the virgin birth,” writes Machen, “was not a fact, the idea of the virgin birth certainly was; and as a fact it requires some explanation.”⁸⁵ It is, above all, the idea that is of interest and requires neither an appeal to its historicity nor to its theological importance, much less being modeled on some pre-existing narrative – be it poetry, folk-tale, or saga. The virgin birth demands some imagination; the narrative is open to such a reading. Equally if not more important, the entire sequence of the virgin birth narratives require to be interpreted so as to recognize the consequences of Jesus’ birth and the events to take place, none more important than Luke’s two births (of John and Jesus) and the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew and the repercussions it will have for the life and death of Jesus.

The relation of dead children in Egypt to the re-emergence of the Jewish people was foundational; both are implicated in a binding relationship. Jesus’ birth will initiate a radical disassociation from the past, first by distinguishing two pregnancies (by Elizabeth and his mother Mary, the first as an analogue of Sarah’s pregnancy and Isaac’s birth, the second as absolutely independent of all prior history and returning to transform the past during Passover), and then by substituting himself, in death, as a revelation necessary for the future. If the freedom of Exodus was dependent on an all-encompassing death of children, ←35 | 36→Jesus will return to the scene of liberation and death not to confirm prophecy, as the narrative insists, but to reclaim the past in order to anticipate a wholly different future. Only Jesus dares to remember the night of the Exodus from Egypt; and only he can dedicate a moment of his life to recognizing the anguish of Egyptian mothers in mourning and the experience of freedom of the Jewish people long enslaved, and with a commemoration not sufficiently stressed by Matthew even though he must be commended for being the only one to include the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem. However, always intent on a prophetic justification, Matthew believes the flight and return to Egypt has been foretold: “this was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son”. ” (Matt. 2:15). Matthew relies on an interpretation of Hosea 11:1 to make Jesus’ sojourn in Egypt prophetic. “The quotations from Scripture in these stories were almost certainly introduced by Matthew.”⁸⁶ By doing so, Matthew has neglected an absolutely crucial moment to occur much later in the future, when Jesus redeems the lives of the children who died on the night of the Exodus. The culpability of the Pharaoh and his people can no longer be imposed on the innocence of children. Jesus therefore relieves them of an undeserving death; he rescues all of them from out of their time and brings them into himself so that they will be able to accompany him during his own terrible night in the Garden of Gethsemane. Only the memory of dead children could console him as he struggled with the ordeal of an impending end.

The virgin birth has been, for obvious reasons, the subject of much debate and has exposed the vulnerability of commentators. A case in point, and one exemplary so as to be comparative: at the same time as Shenk, for example, writes that the virgin birth of Jesus means it is “a new birth for a new creation,” he then adds (and the two thoughts are incommensurable), that its purpose is “to ground our adoption into the Royal Family of Christ.”⁸⁷ Jesus does not belong to a “Royal Family.” The meaning of the virgin birth, while certainly representing a “new creation,” should not be related to any prior tradition, and most certainly not one with any monarchical pretensions. The monarchical has no place in Jesus’ future world; all the kingdoms of the world are to be abolished as an archaic remnant of a time and history coming to an end. Monarchies are irrelevant even if the gospel writers cannot invent a vocabulary adequate to Jesus’ vision of the future ←36 | 37→and do so only with a “kingdom” or basileia. Matthew’s gospel will be in conflict with Jesus being a successor, someone who inherits, who becomes part of a line, a descendant. But nothing could be further from Jesus’ mind – because nothing could be more alien to him – than to view himself as part of what Tabor calls a “royal dynasty.” Tabor makes untenable claims. “He surely knew growing up that he and his brothers were male heirs of the royal line of King David and he would have been well aware of the significant messianic implications of this heritage.”⁸⁸ The monarchical/messianic relationship cannot be imposed on Jesus since every single category used to define his life and teaching all must necessarily struggle to properly represent him since he defies any understanding that would limit his meaning. There is nothing more inappropriate than to impose monarchial ambitions on Jesus. His words must be heard and understood without equivocation. “My kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36).

“The virgin birth is “myth,” in the highest and best sense of the word.”⁸⁹

The myth or story is revealed as logos.

The two “myths” or stories in Luke and Matthew must be read together. The nativity stories, as they begin, are inter-related and each provides the reader with insights necessary for understanding the chronology to come as a whole. Historical “facts” have no relevance; the interpretations are all-important. In the different narrative of the virgin birth in Luke, as compared to Matthew, we have noticeable differences: there is no appearance of the so-called wise men (an event of utmost importance) no flight to Egypt, no Herod and his murderous pathology. However, we do have an equally significant account of the births of two boys (John and Jesus) by one woman who was too old to conceive, and another woman who will give birth despite being a virgin. Both pregnancies are extraordinary, as the sons will also be, each in their own way – the first as a prophet and baptizer, the second as the one who will be declared to be a “first born.” By providing details of both births, Luke also makes a distinction that will separate Jesus from an entire tradition despite including, between his baptism and his temptations in the desert, an extensive genealogy for him leading back ←37 | 38→all the way to Adam and God. Luke cannot realize how both the virgin birth and Jesus’ baptism gives him an emergence entirely independent from any genealogy.

At the very beginning of his gospel, and unique for being first addressed to a specific individual, the Theophilus who is also the recipient of the book of Acts, Luke immediately reveals his purpose and intent: much more aware of himself and his writing (he does seem to be knowledgeable about narrative traditions⁹⁰ and conceits) he begins self-consciously with first acknowledging that “since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events,” he relies on them and the people who have seen, heard, and experienced the teachings of Jesus. Luke admits to being dependent on a newly-established tradition. He has at least one manuscript (by Mark), and possibly more in front of him that he consults as he writes. These prior writers were connected to both “eyewitnesses” and “servants of the word” (1:2). Finally, Luke identifies with and understands himself to be in the service of the word, subservient to the word; he reflects on everything he has read and heard. The last claim is intended to give himself authority and justification – as a writer and, equally important, as a teacher. He can be trusted as a reliable source: “I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you” (1:3). By writing, in order – as the narrative has come down to him – he defends his accuracy, that is, his faithful rendering of whatever he has read, or heard. Luke understands himself to be a teacher, writing so as to pass on and continue the knowledge he has been given. He writes and tells Theophilus he does so “so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed” (1:4). As a writer, Luke knows he is now contributing to new scriptural tradition; he represents a confirmation of what is to be learned from Jesus’ new ideas. After he reads Luke’s account, Theophilus and others will then be in a position to know; the gospel has pedagogical relevance, for it will be passed on to others, to listen to, to read. Luke educates and edifies. Theophilus will have been taught; and so Luke proceeds to structure his narrative with particular ends in mind, the events he considers most important. He makes editorial decisions on the substance and chronology of his story, beginning with the history and the rule of King Herod of Judea. In the gospel of Luke, and beginning with an uprooting and dislocation in ←38 | 39→order to obey the orders of Roman bureaucracy, one difficulty will stand out – as it will in Matthew: the relationship between the virgin birth and the extensive genealogy of his family line. Jesus is both born without a biological father and as a consequence cannot be tied to a genealogical descent while, at the same time, given a history extending to the very beginning of history and Genesis and preceding the “son of Adam” since he is proclaimed to be “son of God” (3:38).

Immediately prior to the genealogy, when he is baptized, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph” (3:23). Luke is making two significant statements; and they are both necessary so as to then turn back to his account from the narrative beginning: one, Jesus “began to be” only when he made the decision to initiate his life as a minister. He was figuratively born at the age of thirty – or, to use John’s language of baptism, he was “regenerated” and therefore born from out of himself; two, and this now allows Luke to clear up what appears to be some uncertainty about Jesus’ father. By emphasizing the “as was thought,” as was assumed, Luke now affirms what he believes to be a truth not easily perceived since it defies documented history. Fitzmyer writes: “whatever way the phrase is going to be understood, it will effect not only the paternity of Joseph (in a real sense? in a putative, legal sense?) but also the climax of the genealogy as a whole.”⁹¹ Everyone assumes Joseph is the father of Jesus; but, as a fact, it is not quite accurate, even misleading. One cannot easily determine if Luke is conscious of the complications of his narrative and the reason the family has to travel to Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth. On the one hand, an angel appears to shepherds and makes the extraordinary announcement that “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah” (2:11); on the other, the family was forced to travel to Bethlehem, apparently Joseph’s home-town, to take part in a mandatory “registration” (a census) ordered by Quirinus, the governor of Syria. The contrast between the angels of Jewish metaphysics and the census of Roman bureaucracy will require, at the appropriate time, a solution; their worlds could not be further apart. Whether Luke can sustain their relationship remains to be seen.

The birth of Jesus occurs during the reign of Caesar Augustus and during a period of “registration,” (apographesthai) more properly a census first initiated by Quirinus, the governor of Syria.⁹² The census was an obligation imposed on the ←39 | 40→population by the Romans. The colony had to be organized and controlled, most especially because of the periodic outbreaks of rebellion; maintaining control of an occupied region required order and efficiency, both military and bureaucratic. At the time, the census could only be done in one’s home-town; therefore, Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem “because he was descended from the house and family of David,” (2:4) with “house” being a Jewish term for a lineage.

The journey had to be trying for the young, expectant mother. The days of travel had to be arduous, physically exhausting. She was emotionally apprehensive, a new bride, pregnant. Though now married, the young couple did not know each other well; conversations may have been halting, awkward. Mary is a young girl, in her early teens, Joseph not much older. The census ensures that Jesus will be Joseph’s legal son – that is, lawful as determined by the Romans. But this census, initiated bureaucratically so as to more efficiently organize and control the occupied people of the region, immediately acknowledges Jesus as registered, legitimate by law; his name is written down and included along with everyone else and as someone who exists. The writing of his name, however, does nothing to determine his own self-conception. Luke’s account here presents considerable challenges for the reader. Jesus has been adopted into two traditions, one according to a lineage extending back to King David, the other determined according to Roman law – inscribed, by some, but not contained, in fact eluding both simultaneously. Luke may not be conscious of his own narrative and how Jesus remains, despite old and new inscriptions, scriptural and bureaucratic, outside their definitions. When Jesus is described as “her first-born son,” being “first” cannot simply be related to Mary as a mother. He is indeed her first-born son; but, with much more significance and repeated often by Jesus himself when he calls himself “the son of man,” he is indeed first and unprecedented. Luke (and Matthew will experience the same difficulties) strains to represent Jesus as a unique and prototypical human being while also, at times and in constant oscillation, relating him back to a tradition that gives him precedence and legitimacy. In this case, the gospel of Luke (as writing, as a document) at least partly recognizes itself, though not without hesitation, as opposed to the Roman census ←40 | 41→that has defined him according to Roman law and to the scriptures who have anticipated him in the history of Judaism. One of the consequences of the gospels is the determination to alter existing social conditions and to re-define familial relations; in each case, laws will be ignored and, in part, superseded. Even if Luke has only an unclear intimation of his undertaking, he must in some sense be conscious of his writing to be independent of two other scriptural forms, both of them legal and reflecting laws – the laws of Jewish scripture, the laws of Caesar and the Roman government.

Paul defines Jesus as “the firstborn within a large family,” (Rom. 8:29) in effect creating an extended family, first of brothers and sisters, who themselves will engender others in a community of like-minded individuals, sharing in the spirit, not the binds of “blood.” Jesus is also described as “the firstborn of every creature,” (Col. 1:15) a first-born, however, who was “before all things,” (Col. 1:17) – making him, as in John, prior to creation. The writer of the letter to the Colossians has one more comment to make; and it will be especially important in thinking of Jesus as both prior to creation and then, identifying with the whole of humanity, generates himself in two simultaneous ways, prior to creation and being “the firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18). Jesus creates himself from the totality of everyone who has been. “From the dead,” though one could just as easily conceive of him emerging in birth from everyone who has lived in the world, so that the self-designation as “the son of man” and the resurrection are inseparable and absolutely related. The meaning of the resurrection will neither be reducible to an event or to the accomplishment of an executed individual; all attempts to contain the resurrection in time fails to recognize its relation to the son of man who is born from the power of the pre-creation logos, the totality of everyone who has ever lived and are now internalized into one being, and the resurrection that revives everyone, in himself, so as to make possible a second act of creation and one to reveal the task of being a new humanity. By being the first-born, Jesus is also described as “the second man,” (1 Cor. 15:47), so in these figures and throughout the Pauline corpus (which does not mention the virgin birth) he is depicted as the first individual who will recover humanity from a prior conception and history; in so doing, the “second man” will be made from the relationship of a pre-creation Jesus and the totality of everyone who has ever lived.

When Luke next places his birth “in a manger,” (Luke 2:7) and, moreover, soon to be acknowledged by simple shepherds, Jesus can no longer be referred to with monarchical language, nor can his meaning be restricted to a particular nationalism he earlier referred to as being “saved from our enemies” (1:71) and “rescued from the hands of our enemies.” (1:74) All eschatological expectations ←41 | 42→will have to be re-thought on the basis of Jesus’ birth. In fact, but this is one more of the many anomalies in the gospel of Luke, when the angel appears to the shepherds he says that the news he brings is “good news of great joy for all the people” (2:10). “All people” could not have been readily understood; everyone lived according to specific identities, attitudes, and beliefs. Universality may be proclaimed; no one, however, could understand its meaning, group identities were too rigid and interests too narrow. They will first have to overcome the imposed limits of their social world to begin to reconceive a future humanity. His death will begin the universal process of a human unity – a task, most obviously, revealed in his life and now moving towards its still distant and inconceivable fulfillment.

It is difficult to imagine a young couple (and most especially an expectant mother) being turned away by an in-keeper without inquiring whether other lodgings were possible; hospitality was an important virtue, especially when considering a pregnant mother-to-be. Mary was no doubt apprehensive, more so when her labor pains began; it is again difficult to see her alone, with no one but Joseph to help her. It is much more likely Mary was attended to by a village mid-wife, along with other women who would have been present to help with the birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, washing the body of the newly born as well as taking care of Mary, comforting her perhaps with medicinal herbs. Whatever the actual events surrounding Mary’s parturition, Luke creates a narrative that ignores the realities of childbirth – as do classical scenes of the crèche with Mary fully clothed and standing beside Jesus. Denying the full humanity of the scene has been unfortunate if understandable. Being born in a manger, though reflective of his humility and as distant as possible from a royal house, has the added meaning of being homeless – a state in no way indicative of deprivation or destitution; on the contrary, to be without home at the moment of his birth means, for everyone, that Jesus will live so as to re-fashion the idea of a home in a family and a particular people. To be born in a manger, surrounded by animals, is antithetical to the pretension of a royal birth, in the “house” if David, in a palace, and being nothing more than an inheritance. Jesus could not be born in a residence. He had to be homeless (as “the son of man” will proclaim to be necessary) out in the world and without comfort or safety, estranged, out of place. Despite Luke’s genealogy, Jesus’ birth in a manger amongst domesticated animals and watched over by shepherds makes him completely opposed to being in any way related to the house of David and its royal line. Luke allows the reader to think the difference between a manger (a feeding-trough for animals) and a royal palace. The full humanity of Jesus must continually be affirmed; and he can only be a revelation when he begins in a birth-place better suited for animals, ←42 | 43→a sense of creation to its foundations, amidst the natural world and in the triadic relationship of animal, human being, and God. The body of Jesus is in close proximity to the human and animal world; his body re-affirms the majesty of the natural world as well as the body of his mother Mary who now claims for herself a designation reserved for Eve, Chavah, “the mother of all living.”

In Luke 2:21, we are told that “he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” The name is also a calling. Jesus the man will call himself into the world out of necessity. The name Jesus, also translated, or its significance explained, is by no means self-evident in meaning or consequence. The name is first uttered by an angel, a hermeneutic being, in other words, who translates the language of God and makes it comprehensible for human beings to understand. To “save” the people (not simply his people) from their hamartia has the sense of recollecting what all people have, until now, missed. Jesus comes into the world so as to call humanity back to a beginning they have relinquished and missed; the symmetry between Jesus’ life and God’s act(s) of creation leads to a new future. The sense of hamartia as what has been missed involves recollecting what, until now, has been made ineffectual (powerless) by the actuality of the world – that is, its finite reality; and this is the reason Jesus will be murdered with extreme violence and, shortly after his birth, persecuted by a king, Herod, who can only understand anything at all from the limited perspective of his social place – the place he has been assigned, by a royal birth and Roman appointment, to hold with tenacity and dread for as long as possible, with a double-threat perpetual and terrifying: usurpation or death.

After Jesus’ birth, abiding in a manger due to an inn being full, Luke presents a scene involving shepherds tending to their flocks and an angel (a messenger and a translator) appearing to them with an announcement. Luke, the writer, does not have the authority himself to make such a claim – the reason an angel, with access to God and his message, becomes necessary in the narrative. Luke depends on an angel since he cannot grant himself the authority of being directly related to God much less have the authority to proclaim his message. The angel appears to the shepherds who are, understandably, afraid, and makes several announcements, first about Jesus’ purpose in the world, to bring good news and that he will be called a “Savior,” (soter) (2:11) a word the shepherds understood to be deeply personal, someone who takes care of life and rescues from threats and danger and death. Luke must sense, or know, that there are now two different and perhaps incompatible, certainly ambiguous aspects to the account of the birth of Jesus. Caesar Augustus may be the emperor of Rome and the de jure leader of Judaea and Galilee, with his proxy Herod, but the arrival of Jesus as someone whose individuality will affect the future will have much more lasting ←43 | 44→consequences, most especially in his influence upon “all people.” He cannot be understood as being limited by an identity he necessarily inherits (though does not adopt – as we will see) because of a soon to be evident self-understanding. As a new-born infant, he can in no way determine the traditions of his father and mother. He cannot, for example, comment on his circumcision, on his mother’s situation and the time for their “purification according to the law of Moses,” (2:22) or on the mandatory visit to Jerusalem to offer the appropriate sacrifices after the birth of a child. The observances are traditional and, for his family, a duty to respect and fulfill. Jesus, as a new-born infant, cannot determine any observances, as he will so adamantly do during his ministry. The man will act to restore to the child (and all children) a freedom to determine themselves for his teaching rather than tradition. The world Jesus is born into may claim and raise him but no history or culture, however binding, can determine his existence.

As Luke struggles to represent Jesus after the episode of the virgin birth, he frames his extensive genealogy with a curious beginning – “being (as was thought) the son of Joseph” (Luke 3:23) – a genealogy following his baptism and before his forty-day sojourn in the wilderness. The three episodes, as narrative, are an attempt by Luke to provide the reader with three inter-related accounts of his beginning following the virgin birth; by doing so, he has over-stretched himself; or rather, divided Jesus’ beginning. On the one hand, he has a virgin birth (and without a father, he can have no genealogy) and on the other he is first reduced back into a genealogy extending down through history. Noticeably, the word genealogia nowhere appears in Luke – or, for that matter, in Matthew. Paul and his community will be unequivocal about Jesus’ genealogy.

Two New Testament letters in particular that, of course, precede both Matthew and Luke, must be read in light of both nativity stories – for they are the only two references to genealogia, as a word, as a concept. First, in a letter to his most important co-worker, Paul (or for those who consider it deutero-Pauline, by someone in the community) advises everyone reading the letter to “neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies” (1 Tim. 1:4). The writer of the letter dissuades the reader from consulting genealogies, as if they themselves were “fables” no longer believable; worse, they are detrimental to a thought now looking forward to a future to be determined by Jesus’ enduring presence. Even more remarkable, another letter advises to “avoid foolish questions, and genealogies,” (Titus 3:9) a statement of incomparable importance since it introduces, for the first time, the lexicon of “regeneration.” In other words, in the very document equating the sacrament of baptism with “regeneration” (the palingenesis of Titus 3:5) – a regeneration John will understand in relation to Jesus making possible a ←44 | 45→new birth through the sacrament of baptism– we also have a repudiation of the genealogies that insist on portraying Jesus as tied to a line of succession.

The idea of regeneration is antithetical to genealogies.

The regeneration made possible by baptism is precisely the ability of being free from the past, from what has already occurred, in forgiveness, in forgetting; unless regeneration, another genesis, is conceived as the opening of a new future and the ability to relinquish the past, then its efficacy is limited. Regeneration and genealogies are incommensurable; the regeneration inherent in baptism makes it possible to become a renewed and different human being – no longer burdened with all the accumulated experiences of the past and their painful repercussions much less the continuing burdens of the sins of prior generations. Baptism nullifies the past – completely, not simply the past of one’s individuality, but a freedom from the way the past continues to influence the present and anticipate (and thereby limit) the future. The genealogies in both Luke and Matthew become superfluous; there are more serious, more urgent events around the virgin birth whose meanings will be necessary for the time to come for all of Jesus’ followers.

In the gospel of Matthew, the virgin birth initiates a series of inter-related events that, together and comprehensively, provide extended meanings for Jesus’ life, with one inadvertent consequence of his coming into the world that will remind him of another beginning, a moment to perpetually remember, a trauma persistent in its effects, long lasting in consequence, and present for Jesus until his crucifixion prior to the beginning of Passover. If Mark and John open their biographies with “in the beginning,” Matthew in part emulates them by presenting “an account of the genealogy” (biblos geneseos) of Jesus, (1:1), making him “the son of David” and then “the son of Abraham” (noticeably, inverting the chronology and genealogy) and extending his lineage to Joseph. Matthew opens with an extensive and, for him, precise genealogy: he relates Jesus to foundational traditions – patriarchal and monarchical, though Joseph does not have the definition of father. Barclay writes that Matthew’s “dominating idea is that of Jesus as king. He writes to demonstrate the royalty of Jesus.”⁹³ Harrington adds: “the function of Matthew’s genealogy is to trace Jesus’ descent back to David and Abraham.”⁹⁴ While Matthew does present Jesus’ genealogy and its relationship ←45 | 46→to the Davidic line, one event after his birth will make any relationship to being a monarchical succession difficult to maintain. Not once in the entirety of the gospels does Jesus ever refer to himself as a king – from the beginning of his ministry to the moment when Pilate asks, as an accusation, if he claims to be the King of the Jews. That Jesus does not answer (only affirms what Pilate called him, “you say so”) testifies to the belief he has of himself. Jesus disassociates himself from any genealogical succession, and most of all the inheritance of kings. Jesus can in no way be considered monarchical, royal, or dynastic.

The announcement of the birth of Jesus from a woman who has had no sexual relations is only the first of the many remarkable events that will require the appearance of an angel in a dream, allusions to prophetic fulfillments, the arrival of “wise men” (magoi) from the East, a frantic escape from Bethlehem to avoid Herod’s murderous intent, and an extended stay in Egypt before returning to Nazareth, once more Matthew telling us that “there he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, He will be called a Nazorean” (2:23). Matthew’ story makes Jesus both central but dependent, emerging from a scriptural tradition; as in Luke, there soon appears an apparent resistance to the events as relational. The tension between two versions cannot be avoided. Despite Matthew’s insistence, the ambiguity remains.

The first appearance of an angel, in a dream, begins to influence human decisions and events. Angels intervene; they appear for different reasons, to provide guidance, knowledge, or in the case of Joseph, some reassurance. The angel appears to Joseph in a dream so as to relieve him of an understandable apprehension. Joseph is engaged to be married to Mary; sometime prior to their wedding day, she has informed him of her pregnancy. Despite vowing that she is still a virgin, Mary is expecting a child – a son that will not be his. His reaction must have been emotional and incredulous. The future husband is anxious about his future-wife’s possible promiscuity, though his imagination must have considered other, even more disturbing possibilities. Later writers will not hesitate to expose Mary to Roman brutality as a plausible explanation for her pregnancy and to deny the Christian belief in the virgin birth. It would have been socially acceptable for Joseph to reject her as a future bride. He considered breaking off the engagement publicly; since he was a “righteous” man, pious and considerate, he did not want to expose her to the serious consequences of public shame. Joseph therefore made the decision to call off the wedding and end their relationship privately. If her pregnancy became known, a traditional community would forever stigmatize her. Reacting perhaps naturally and no doubt feeling betrayed and shocked, Joseph resolved to break off their engagement. The social shame ←46 | 47→would be too much to bear, a future with her as his wife (with a child not even his own) unthinkable. He no doubt talked to his father, who would have arranged the marriage in the first place. The angel, appearing to him prior to carrying out his intentions, has extraordinary news for Joseph; first, the son Mary will bear has been conceived by the Holy Spirit and “you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21) and second, how all the events about to unfold are in relation to announcements made by the prophets and initiated by God. How Joseph could have understood the meaning of “Holy Spirit” (literally, a holy or sacred breath – that which made Adam a “living soul”) is difficult to fathom; the promise of his son being a “savior” may have been equally puzzling, especially for someone who was a skilled trade-worker without much of a formal education, even if he had traditional familiarity with the Hebrew bible. Matthew’s narrative forces us to presuppose Joseph being able to understand the message from an angel – an emissary from God who is supposed to make all such communication understandable. One cannot easily assume Joseph’s knowledge of a theological vocabulary; besides, that he had a dream of an angel also meant he merely reflected a common superstition in antiquity – that dreams were meaningful and related to God, portents, or the dead. In any case, Joseph accepted the dream as truthful. He had enough belief in the significance of dreams to change his mind, keep her pregnancy secret, and get married to Mary after all.

Now that Matthew has outlined the detailed genealogy of Jesus’ family as it relates, chronologically, to the patriarch Abraham and to King David, he finalizes the introduction of the virgin birth with one final claim: “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet,” (Matt. 1:22) repeating himself so there can be no misunderstanding on the part of the reader; more particularly, the announcement by Isaiah, now repeated by the gospel writer, testifies that a virgin will give birth to a son. The two gospel writers who include the virgin birth do so under an enormous strain, a pervasive dilemma they everywhere reveal if unable to adequately solve: to make Jesus born from a virgin, Matthew ultimately cannot (despite his attempt) insert him back into a three-part history, patriarchal, monarchical, and prophetic. The two gospel writers of the virgin birth portray his unprecedented individuality while simultaneously adopting him back into a genealogy and a history that can neither engender him nor limits his possibilities. The tremendous proclamation “before Abraham was, I am,” (John 8:58) allows us to reflect on Jesus’ consciousness and how he conceives his meaning – one he knows to be elusive and enigmatic for his disciples and more so for the writers who will assume the responsibility of committing him to a written logos. Once the virgin birth is announced and Jesus is claimed for a three-part history, Matthew then moves to an episode, recounted ←47 | 48→by him alone, that begins a first disassociation between Jesus and a monarch. It is above all the unique events in the gospels that deserve the most attention; in this case, an inadvertent consequence of his birth will lead to an event of grief and mourning and become a permanent reminder for Jesus of a history (indeed, two historical moments) inseparable in his life. In Matthew, the apparent centrality of the virgin birth is only one beginning. When he is old enough, and most probably prior to his entrance into the temple of Jerusalem as a twelve-year-old, Jesus already knows himself to be an unprecedented human being who will simultaneously be the pre-creation logos and therefore capable of returning to the past – and by repeating a moment (in Egypt) recollecting it in order to transform it for the future.

When Jesus is born in Bethlehem, the Davidic city, Matthew uniquely gives us a report on the “wise men (magoi) from the East came to Jerusalem,” (Matt. 2:1) though we soon learn they are neither “wise,” nor, as legend has it, kings. For some reason only known to them, the magoi have traveled from somewhere in the east, possibly Babylon, to Jerusalem, following a star that has led them to the city, so as to find someone who has recently been “born King of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2) and for the purpose of “worshipping” him. The “wise men” who come from another country are learned men, with knowledge of astrology, divination, and the interpretation of dreams. One celestial phenomenon – be it star, comet, remnant of a nova – gave them an unmistakable impression: the imminent birth of a king, and to be precise, the “King of the Jews.” How any of these magoi came to the conclusion that Jesus was the “king of the Jews” defies explanation. They were also astrologers and therefore expected to predict the future as well as at least partly famous for their supposed ability to interpret dreams, though they were also known to be impostors and fakes, famous more for their place in a royal court as entertainers and “magicians.” Tricks and sleight-of-hand illusions were performed by people trained in the magic arts. When their search for a royal individual becomes public and known to Herod (who along with the entire city is, for some unknown reason, “troubled”) he summons the chief priests and the scribes and asks them “where the Messiah was to be born,” (Matt. 2:4) a title Herod could not have used since, presumably, he is less interested in messianic hopes and aspirations than in the real possibility of a king usurping his rule. For all his power, Herod was nothing more than a client-king, useful and convenient for the Romans who needed someone to maintain order. Following the eastern custom of acknowledging a king and making obeisance to him, the magoi not only begin the first of many misinterpretations of Jesus, in identity and purpose, they cause (if unintentionally) a tragedy only Jesus will understand in meaning and scope.

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When Herod the king hears about the birth of someone who could, in principle, threaten his rule, undermine his power, and cause his death either inadvertently or wilfully, he immediately takes action with a response consistent with the paranoia and brutality endemic to the nature of monarchical rule. Herod is an embarrassment; and so typical of the absolute arrogance most especially of kings who are born privileged and then given a world-historical position for no other reason than they were royal by birth, thereby precluding any possibility they could ever become (that is, make themselves) something other than an inheritance. Herod’s panicked response to the announcement that “the King of the Jews” was to be born, seems now to be a double misinterpretation: one, on the part of the long-suffering Jews who, occupied and made destitute by the Romans, could envision being saved militarily by a king; two, anticipated as a possible usurper to a throne, Jesus was feared by a Herod who was compromised by being nothing more than a client of the Romans and, therefore, easily dismissed from power, exiled or killed if it served their purpose. Instead of fearing his true threats, the Romans and, of course, himself, Herod fell prey to the paranoid imagination of a king whose power is ephemeral and will not possibly last since it is founded on nothing more than a bureaucratic arrangement of society at a particular historical time.

Herod then summons the magoi and sends them to find the child, with the pretext of also worshipping him; he has a plan in mind, and he easily manipulates the eager foreigners to find the new-born baby. They do eventually locate him, with the help of a guiding star and present him with the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Their presence, at this point, is no longer necessary. “The magi have not fully understood the significance of the child to whom they are paying homage.”⁹⁵ They have, perhaps, understood nothing at all and have been used by Matthew as convenient proxies who serve a narrative purpose. Before returning to Herod to inform him of the birth of the child – they are, then, far from wise and show themselves to have been duped – they are warned not to visit Herod again and instead return home by a different route. They have served their purpose, never to be heard from again except in later legends, complete with exotic names invented to give them unwarranted individuality.

Joseph, also and again in a dream, is told by an angel to leave Bethlehem and flee to Egypt. At this point, however, Matthew believes – that is, he interprets – Jesus’ journey to Egypt as both predicted and necessary. “This was to fulfill ←49 | 50→what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son”. ” (Matt. 2:15). Matthew’s interpretation of the journey completely fails to realize the meaning of Jesus going to Egypt. He cannot recognize the implications in his own narrative – between Herod’s order to kill the children of Bethlehem and the foundational night of Passover in Egypt.

Jesus will recognize his purpose by being the only one to understand the relation of the two historical moments. Dead children, in Egypt and in Bethlehem, engender him.

The journey was not to fulfill a prophecy as Matthew believes. Jesus returns to an inauguration. The parallel between the death of the Egyptian first-born and the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem has implications that will only be revealed by Jesus in his relationship to the dead and dying and at the culmination of his ministry, first during the Last Supper and the foundation of a sacrament (the extraordinary meaning of his body and his blood internalized by his disciples) and in the garden of Gethsemane as he confronts, in terror, his own death. Even though Matthew “had no inhibitions about imposing his own interpretation on the text he borrowed,”⁹⁶ his decision to include the slaughter of the innocent and Jesus’ journey to Egypt has meanings (for the hermeneutic reader) he may not have envisioned. Jesus does not fulfill prophecy by being in Egypt. He returns to a historical experience and places himself, in self-conception, to an inauguration led by Moses. Matthew’s interpretation, as an attempt to persuade the reader, becomes vulnerable and questionable when, as we will see most especially in his relationship to death and mourning, another meaning altogether is understood by Jesus himself. Jesus is not the fulfillment of a prophetic tradition. The return to Egypt allows him to compare two events, the creation of Passover in Exodus and the meaning of his birth and his life.

“When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men” (Matt. 2:16). Many commentators believe the incident to be fictitious. “The story of the infanticide of Bethlehem,” Bock writes, “is thought to be legendary and unhistorical.”⁹⁷ Whether the event took place or not has no bearing at all on the overall significance of the relation of Jesus’ birth with Herod’s monarchical ←50 | 51→rule as himself the proxy king of the Jews. At issue, ultimately, is the first misunderstanding of Jesus, one that will be perpetuated and lead to his arrest and execution. The slaughter of the children of Bethlehem following the birth of Jesus will be essential to his life once he begins his ministry. In his concern for the well-being of children, we notice the extent of his feelings, his care for them; those are obvious. There are also other examples of Jesus’ sayings, challenging for the hearer and much more difficult to understand. When, for example, he tells his listeners that one must become like a child to enter the kingdom of God, they would have been, at least, unsure about his meaning and, perhaps, dumbfounded; they needed to hear much more in order to collect together all his references to children. In the gospels, Jesus will warn others with nothing less than a severe threat: to those who are a scandal to children, “stumbling blocks” while raising and bringing them up, it would be preferable if their life ended, their future nullified. Rather than simply a relationship of protection and care, Jesus provides us with his conception of child development (of socialization and indoctrination) that in some sense prevents the child from being other than a mimetic copy, nothing more than emulation. In the gospel of Luke, there will be a unique biographical experience of Jesus as a twelve-year-old in the Jerusalem temple and a parable of the prodigal son no one has interpreted as autobiographical. Jesus understands himself to be prodigal not in terms of disappointing his father or squandering his inheritance, but to make a distinction between Joseph as his lawful father (legal according to the Roman census) and himself as the father to the man who – to become who he was – had to abandon his family and his home. Jesus had to engender himself as a child from the concept of being the “first-born.”

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75 In What are the Gospels? A Comparison of Graeco-Roman Biography. Second Edition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004, Richard A. Burridge believes that “the gospels belong with other works of a clear biographical interest,” 191.

76 Girard, René. The One by Whom Scandal Comes. Tr. M. B. DeBevoise. East Lansing: Michigan State Press, 2014, 69.

77 Wright, N. T. Who was Jesus? Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992, 73.

78 Fitzmyer, Joseph A. Luke the Theologian: Aspects of his Teaching. New York: Paulist Press, 1989, 37.

79 Wansbrough, Henry. “The Infancy Stories of the Gospels since Raymond E. Brown,” 5–22 in New Perspectives on the Nativity. Ed. Jeremy Corley. London: T&T Clark, 2009.

80 Vermes, Geza. The Nativity: History and Legend. New York: Doubleday, 2006, 3. He later adds that the gospels of Matthew and Luke “are unlikely to be reliable from the point of view of history,” 28. That Vermes turns to extant texts to argue for the virgin birth being a later, theological attestation may be (as always with him) philologically interesting but perhaps neglects the more important hermeneutical point, the one that will be a consequence of my leading argument. In Jesus the Jew, his argument that Matthew and Luke “treat it merely as a preface to the main story” (214) runs completely counter to my own. Merely a preface?

81 Wright, Nicholas Thomas and Borg, Marcus. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. New York: HarperOne, 1989. Wright’s entry into the section entitled The Birth of Jesus is “Born of a Virgin?,”178. Marcus Borg’s response is entitled “The Meaning of the Birth Stories.”

82 Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. New York: Doubleday, 1993, 29.

83 Lüdemann, Gerd. Virgin Birth? The Real Story of Mary and her Son Jesus. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1998, 140

84 Bultmann, Rudolf. The History of the Synoptic Tradition. Tr. John Marsh. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963, 291–292.

85 Machen, John Gresham. The Virgin Birth of Christ. London: James Clarke & Co., Ltd., 1930, 1, my emphasis.

86 Boers, Hendrikus. Who was Jesus?: The Historical Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989, 11.

87 Shenk, Richard A. The Virgin Birth of Christ: The Rich Meaning of a Biblical Truth. Bletchley: Paternoster, 2016.

88 Tabor, James D. The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, his Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006, 154. Despite Tabor’s confidence (“he surely knew,” “would have been well aware”) it is very hard to think of Jesus as a young man growing up in an obviously modest household and see himself, and his brothers, as in any way related to a royal line. Nothing in his teaching (nothing in what he says) makes him the least bit concerned with any idea of a monarchy.

89 Boslooper, Thomas. The Virgin Birth. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962, 21.

90 In Richard I. Pervo’s Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) he goes as far as saying that Luke is concerned with writing a narrative that is “aesthetically pleasing” and one that should also “entertain.” In The Four Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1924) B. H. Streeter calls Luke a “consummate literary artist,” 548. See, as well, C. M. Tuckett’s Luke’s Literary Achievement: Collected Essays. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, Ltd., 1995.

91 Fitzmyer, Joseph. A. To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies. Second Edition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981, 58.

92 The event has been denied in terms of its historicity and with research indicating the dates of the census and Jesus’ birth could not have happened at the same time. In this case, and without considering the disappointment of historians, Luke’s narrative has one over-reaching meaning: Jesus has been categorized (he is registered) as the legal son of Joseph. Any relationship to Roman law, however, is entirely inadequate in either defining or understanding Jesus’ being in the world. For an assessment of the history, see Richard L. Niswonger’s New Testament History. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982. See especially chapter 6, “Jesus: the Early Years and the Roman Environment,” 119–136.

93 Barclay, William. The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. One. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1975, 10.

94 Harrington, Daniel J. The Gospel of Matthew. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991, 31.

95 Gibbs, Jeffrey A. Matthew 1:1–11:1. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016, 126.

96 Freeman, Charles. A New History of Early Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 78.

97 Bock, Emil. The Childhood of Jesus: The Unknown Years. Tr. Maria St. Goar. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1997, 104.